So, in May sometime, these adorable little strawberry-shaped kiosks popped up all over Berlin overnight. In the morning, the one down the block from me propped open its awning (even though mine is not strawberry-shaped, alas), and a friendly lady in a strawberry-printed apron started dealing out several really delicious regional varieties, in 500g packages or more, until her stock sold out for the day. A rotating cast of strawberry salespeople has been at it every day since (excluding Sundays). I’ve been known to go through 500g a day….
The kiosks have a fascinating story behind them: they were the brainchild of Ulrike Dahl, the grand-daughter of founder Karl Dahl, when the family suddenly found themselves with hectares of strawberries and no one to sell them to after the “turnaround” after the War let cheap strawberries from Poland flood the market, replacing the ones the Dahls were selling to the local jam factory. Since they had gone all-in on jam before the War, they were in trouble–until Ulrike’s kiosk idea came along. Using it, the family started selling their strawberries direct to the consumer in Berlin and other north-German cities, and a tradition was born. The family story is here if you’d like to read more about it. But the really jaw-dropping part is that they opened an Erlebnis-Dorf, or Adventure Village, which is basically a strawberry theme park with rides, U-pick strawberries, farm tours, etc. I tried to get Birgit to go with me, and this was one of the very few times she turned me down; after 2 kids, she’s done her time at the Erlebnis-Dorf. But even she gets excited when the kiosks pop up in the spring.
The Rookery 